Heard this doozy this a.m. on local talker WMAL AM 630 in the D.C. metro area.
Woman calls up 911, operator calmly asks the obligatory what is the nature of the problem question, to which the woman replies that she just came home to find that her 12 year old and 14 year old daughters had been fighting and one had kicked a hole in a door (the 12 year apparently had done so).
She continued on and admits to the operator that her children are "out of control", especially the 12 year old.
The response:
"OK. Do you want us to come over and shoot her?"-- 911 Dispatch Operator Mike Forbess.
WMAL host Michael Graham had the audio from the call. From there the conversation goes into one in which the woman, obviously stunned starts scolding the operator and asks for his name and continues on with the threat to see his supervisor and have him fired.
He apologized for cracking a joke in poor taste, and continued on in a more professional manner, all while the woman, who just moments ago was calling 911, the number reserved for reporting EMERGENCIES - life and death situations normally, continues to berate him for not responding to "her emergency" with anything other than a joke asking if police should be dispatched to shoot the out of control child.
So many things wrong here worth discussion and addressing.
First, to the 911 operator. The guy was wrong, completely and totally, for cracking any jokes about the woman's problems. Especially for cracking a joke about dispatching someone over to shoot the troublesome daughter. Should he lose his job over it? Not in my opinion. A stiff reprimand, definitely. Loss of vacation time, suspension without pay, something similar, yes. Something that gives him a good reminder to not joke about stuff like this again. According to what I heard on the radio show, he was reprimanded, but not fired. Also, according to the radio show, the woman continues to press to have the individual fired.
Now, on to the woman. Personally, I agree with some of the call-in's for the radio show. She should be charged with mis-use of the emergency 911 system. When she called, her children were not directly out of control (sorry, I wish I had an .mp3 audio clip or transcript to link to). It became even more obvious as she berated the operator that she was not in an emergency situation, especially since she had time to dress-down the operator and threaten to have him fired.
Further, if she believed that her children were uncontrollable, then perhaps she should have a visit from CPS (Child Protective Services) so they can come take those uncontrollable children away and place them in a new home. If that had been result of the original 911 call, then she'd be screaming bloody murder that she's been wronged and she's not an unfit mother.
It saddens and frustrates me to read that there are places in the country where people dial into 911 and are met with busy signals, or requests to hold please. No one in an emergency should face such circumstances. 911 is for emergency service. It's not for people that can't control their kids (probably because they didn't believe in spanking the little hooligans to begin with).
Anyway, I'm sure someone out here will tell me I'm wrong, and that quote merits firing the operator. Feel free.
